What O'Brien has done is as close as you will get to walking on water

He was born to do this, but not now. Not yet. This is teaching your son to ride a tricycle one day and watching him speeding around Silverstone in a Ferrari the next. These things are supposed to take time but Joseph O'Brien has always been in a hurry.

He was in a hurry for height, quickly soaring to 6ft. In a hurry to ride winners, celebrating his first success just five days after his 16th birthday. In a hurry to grab Group 1 winners, steering Roderic O'Connor to victory in the Irish 2,000 Guineas two days before his 18th birthday. In a hurry to train winners, saddling four of them at Gowran Park and Listowel on his first day as an official trainer. A first Classic winner arrived in his first full year as a trainer too.

Now he's in a hurry to catch daddy and replicate the extraordinary things his father has done. What's the rush, though? Dad Aidan is only 48. He is nowhere near ready for sipping cocoa in his slippers and trying to get nine-letter words on Countdown. He is still doing things so extraordinary they cannot be defined in a dictionary.